As special counsel Robert Mueller builds his case, relatives of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn are among those pressing the president to use his unique legal power and ‘put these defendants out of their misery.’

That was the clear message from Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron in their double act at the global elite shindig in the Swiss Alps. They didn’t take to the Davos stage at the same time on Wednesday, but they might as well have.

They obviously wanted to make this occasion count, to use the Davos stage to show off Europe’s strengths at a time of international turmoil. The Brits may have lost it and voted for Brexit, the Americans really lost it and chose Trump, but Europe is on the up, politically and economically. The Old Continent offers both stability (that’s the Merkel part of the double act) and a desire to make bold new moves (step forward, Monsieur Macron).

Merkel was up first. Fresh from her political near-death experience, and with the Social Democrats (almost) safely in hand as her coalition partner, the veteran chancellor spent far less time discussing her recent difficulties back home than she did talking about compromising with fellow EU leaders on reforms to the bloc.

“Germany is a country committed to finding multilateral solutions. Unilateral action and protectionism are not the answer” — Angela Merkel

“We need to be patient,” she said, presenting her pitch for how the world should be run. That may be an old-school and boring approach, but it sums up Merkel and Merkelism to a tee — and in her view, and telling, represents a better bet than being unpredictable in one’s decision-making. The dig at U.S. President Donald Trump, who is due in Davos on Thursday, was missed by no one.

“For people from outside, it is a cultural experience to see how we find solutions in Europe,” Merkel said. “It takes a while” to sit down and find a compromise with 27 other leaders, she added, but she’s being doing it for long enough to advocate “the laborious but rewarding attempt to act multilaterally.”

“Germany is a country committed to finding multilateral solutions. Unilateral action and protectionism are not the answer,” she said, bluntly criticizing Trump’s approach to trade and taxation. “Let us not shut ourselves off from the world. Let us keep pace with the best in the world and prepare ourselves to withstand the crises of the future.”

Merkel warmed the crowd up nicely for the younger, more energetic Macron to seduce, charm and reassure.

A short time later, the French president was on stage and he echoed Merkel’s calls for multilateralism and deeper integration. “We work very closely in that direction,” Macron said of Merkel’s speech.

“Europe has a responsibility and a role to play towards China and the U.S.,” he said. “If we want to avoid fragmentation in the world, we need a stronger Europe,” he said, adding that “France is back at the core of Europe because we will never have any French successes without European success.”

Europe’s on the up

Upbeat and self-confident Europeans have claimed center stage at this year’s WEF meeting in Davos, claiming that their way of dealing with crises works (eventually).

Growth has returned to Europe after years of stagnating or outright shrinking economies. The political crises that plagued EU leaders seem over (for now), as the populists — of the sort that Davos people tend to dislike — were defeated in France and the Netherlands. Greece, the eurozone’s problem child for years, has its sights set on a return to the markets later this year. Even Germany, which saw its main parties suffer in last fall’s election, is on course for another centrist coalition.

That optimism has brought many European leaders to Davos. Even European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker planned to go, for the first time in more than two decades, before cancelling because of a stomach bug.

Merkel skipped Davos last year, too. But she was back this time, ready to fill the void in global leadership that emerged when Trump moved into the White House.

Her speech — a laundry list of three major EU policy reform projects: regulating the data economy, strengthening capital markets and and banking union projects, and a common EU foreign policy — played to the chancellor’s strength of being reassuring, not exciting.

She doesn’t seem to mind that Macron is much more energetic. “He brought yet another fresh impetus to European integration,” she said of the president.

He thanked Merkel by contradicting her — in method, not in substance. “We need more ambition in order to have a more sovereign and united Europe,” Macron said, urging a multispeed Europe rather than Merkel’s patient plan to drag all EU countries along with her.

“If some people are ready to be more ambitious … let’s move,” said Macron. “Those who don’t want to move forward should not be able to block the more ambitious people in the room.”

Macron woos big money

Macron, a former investment banker, was more blunt than Merkel in his attempt to lure investors to his country. He promised to attract fresh money by “realigning France to Germany and Northern Europe” in terms of productivity and competitiveness.

France should become “a model in the fight against climate change,” he said, announcing, to great applause, that “we will close all our coal-fired power stations by 2021.”

“Data is the raw material of the 21st century” — Angela Merkel

Sticking with the energy theme, he made a rather obvious joke about the heavy snow and Trump. “Fortunately, you didn’t invite anybody who is skeptical of global warming this year,” he quipped.

And although Macron spoke for a long time — as is his way — he was cheered to the rafters at the end, including by excitable Belgian and Spanish royals.

Unlike Macron, Merkel has yet to officially start another term in office, as she waits on the Social Democratic Party’s leadership to convince the party faithful to rejoin the government. But there were hints of her domestic plans.

“Data is the raw material of the 21st century,” she said, before warning of the “disruptive changes of technology” that could leave people behind.

That sounded not only like a common project she can work on with Macron, it also sounded like she was reaching out to the SPD to find something they can work on together in the coming years.

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Filippo

“For people from outside, it is a cultural experience to see how we find solutions in Europe,” Merkel said. “It takes a while” to sit down and find a compromise with 27 other leaders, she added, but she’s being doing it for long enough to advocate “the laborious but rewarding attempt to act multilaterally.”
And, yes, when we find out there is some problem, say, in Greece in 2009, what we do, I mean our way of working, is sitting down, say, until bottom 2010, and wait until a 50 bn matter becomes a 300 bn matter.
But this is not the only success story of our multilateral method, of course. When we find out that if we ask the whole africa to come in then the whole africa, how strange, tries to come in, what we do is sit down, and I guess that many, starting from that orange haired gorilla leading the US, should imitate us, and discuss until we have a proposal to change treaties agreed when immigration was from ireland to united states and from southern italy to switzerland or maybe from Carthago to Rome, hey I said a proposal not a decision, and then we keep discussing the fine tuning of something that half of our countries already told us they will never comply with, in the meanwhile some million african jump on boats, a few tens thousands drown in the water, and the rest scatters all overs the continent to beg in train stations, but ok nobody’s perfect and at least we comply with our multilateral method and I just wonder why that orange haired gorilla doesn’t take us as an example.

Posted on 1/24/18 | 10:53 PM CET

Filippo

That doesn’t mean we are not able to be timely, of course. When the whole world is threatened by a dramatic credit crunch and chain defaults happen daily, what we do is raising interest rates, no matter if all the countries of the world are doing the opposite.
But that doesn’t mean we can’t realize when we are wrong. We see, obviously, that many central banks are involved in quantitative easings and, so, we do the same with only seven years delay. This is what, in our smrt european method, we call “doing the wrong thing when it isn’t even worth anymore”.

Posted on 1/24/18 | 11:08 PM CET

Saintixe

@Filippo
Merkel is plan-plan.
Very slow.
It is not procrastination but she could do with some speed. There must be a middle term between excessive speed and catatonia.

Posted on 1/24/18 | 11:12 PM CET

Filippo

@saintixe
well…when she wants to (see declaration on private sector involvemente Deauville 2010 or invitation to refugees september 2015) she is even too quick

Posted on 1/25/18 | 12:42 AM CET

Observer

Merkel and Macron , destroyers of EU.

Posted on 1/25/18 | 6:38 AM CET

take it for granted

Florian Eder
You have brought a full basket of garbage here.
Pathetic attempt to reverse reality.

Posted on 1/25/18 | 9:27 AM CET

Rod

Everyone knows that the United States is the engine that runs the global economy, while Germany and France are just the muffler and radiator. The real meetings will begin once Donald Trump arrives, representing the largest economy the world. It is has it has always been, the United States leading the world at Davos. Trump will need to let the Davos crowd know that their is a new leadership in America and things are going to change.

Posted on 1/25/18 | 3:14 PM CET

wow

Centre stage at these events is normally the last day (today), not the middle day (macron/merkel).

You know that already Politico.

Nice spin.

Posted on 1/25/18 | 5:31 PM CET

Jason

France is back! Giving you €30,000 of “Macron” the new range of cosmetics for men!

Posted on 1/25/18 | 9:35 PM CET

haha

merkel is not a bad leader sadly she stayed in power to long.

Posted on 1/26/18 | 8:46 AM CET

wow

Poor Macron. Always pretending the french agriculture dependence can be turned into London. Not allowed to be mayor of London though. Has to visit carrot farmers instead.

Posted on 1/26/18 | 10:54 AM CET

ironworker

I don’t know why but this Macron reminds me of characters from French comedy movies, restless-choleric, hyper-optimistic, totally unembarrassed by his wife age. Merkel, on the other hand, is kind of Macron opposite, soft-spoken and word-gesture-measured like a true serial killer, emotionless, dogmatic to insanity, Adolf Hitler kind of ambitious, each and every public appearance is studied to the smallest detail and rehearsed in advance, undemocratic, she hates to be criticized.